> Ideally, everything one says should be sincere, so your idea sounds weird to me. This is an extremely characteristic HN/engineer comment. People use irony i

> Ideally, everything one says should be sincere, so your idea sounds weird to me. This is an extremely characteristic HN/engineer comment. People use irony in communication. It's part of the human repertoire. Saying "oh great" in response to bad news, for example. The notion that ideally there would be no irony in textual communication isn't a practical or desirable possibility. It's in the same Zuckerbergian category as beliefs in the transparency of communication or the sacred integrity of having a single online identity. The thing that really kills the "sincerity mark" is that there's no reason why it can't be abused and lose its meaning, as has happened with the word "literally".